From Data to Decisions: The Product Manager's Guide to Communication

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As a product manager, you play a vital role in shaping the development of a product. You're the one who ensures that everyone understands and is working together towards the same goal. And while the phrase "CEO of the product" is often used to describe the role, it's important to understand that being a product manager is not just about making all the decisions - it's about making it obvious to everyone else what those decisions should be. How can you be successful at that? In short, you need to both be an effective communicator, and be confident in your judgement in the story you’re telling.

Let’s start with communication. You need to be able to convey the insights you've gathered through customer interviews, experiments, and other discovery work in a way that is understandable, actionable, and compelling. You need to be able to tell a story that takes others on the journey of what you've learned and why it's important.

While it’s sensible to keep a record of the process you’ve followed, or the methods behind the experiments you’re running, when it comes to sharing the output of your work with other people beyond the immediate product team - think designers, engineers or executives - remember to keep the key points front and centre:

  • What were we trying to learn (or what question were we trying to answer)?

  • Why did we think it was important to learn more in this area?

  • What were the main things we learned?

By keeping a clear narrative line through those three points, it should be easier to achieve our goal of making it obvious to everyone what the next decisions must be.

So where does confidence come into the picture? Confidence, or rather, a lack of it, is one of the main headwinds you might face when trying to pin down that clear decision-making narrative. Just presenting raw data and analysis is not enough. One of my reports recently expressed surprise to me that a team member did not interpret things in the same way as they did when reviewing a spreadsheet with the data from a product usage analysis. Even though it can be tempting to share all the data and learnings when presenting your work, it’s rare for your audience to latch on to the same insights as you - everyone has their own biases and perspectives, which is why you need to emphasise what you believe to be the most important insights. Failing to do so can sometimes literally kill people! (though, thankfully, most PMs don’t tend to work in these life-or-death scenarios…)

This is the importance of confidence - you need to trust yourself and your judgment. You won't always get it right, but that's okay. Sure, Product managers have biases too, but what should hopefully set us apart is that firstly, we should be more self-aware of our own biases, and secondly, the work we do should naturally expose us to perspectives and opinions that are different. You can always change your opinion, your narrative, and your direction based on new information. What's most important is that you're clear about what you know and what you believe at any given point in time.

In short, as a product manager, you have to strive to put the most important insights on a plate for others. You need to be an effective communicator and storyteller, and you need to be open to new perspectives and opinions. You also need to trust yourself and have confidence in your judgment. By doing these things, you'll be able to guide the development of a product that meets the needs of your customers and delivers value to them and your organisation.